Cash for comments: The fashion blogosphere's liquid bonanza

stella mccartney for target australia launch, sydney, october 1st/little black book

They are literally throwing money at bloggers at the moment in Australia. Not in the traditional advertising sense, whereby a marketer pays to take out clearly-delineated advertising space in your publication. In fact it’s almost impossible to find many, if any, bloggers who are earning a living out of legitimate display advertising. No, affiliate marketing (pay per click or pay per buy) and sponsored, advertorial posts are the way of the world right now (although not on frockwriter, just to clarify once again). Westfield is currently recruiting a blogger for a 12-month, $100,000 contract. One of the finalists is 19 years old. That’s an extraordinary salary for a teenager. We mentioned the recent Target Stella McCartney launch for which six bloggers (pictured above, details below) were flown to Sydney and paid to write approved copy. 

Remuneration in these situations usually depends on web traffic, but in general terms frockwriter understands there are Australian fashion bloggers earning up to $900 per sponsored post under these sorts of deals (and just to clarify, there is usually a sponsorship disclosure eg "Sponsored by Nuffnang" at the top of the posts). With your average blog post not exceeding 400 words, many a mere 200 words, that’s potentially $2-4 per word. The average freelance journalist would be lucky to get $1/word for work in Australia at the moment, with even some prestigious newspapers offering as little as 50c/word for the privilege of having your byline in their publication. 


The latest blogger cash bonanza is a project called Lustable from online payment service PayPal. According to PayPal, five Australian bloggers including Matt Jordan, Phoebe Montague and Candice DeVille are each being given $1,000 cash a week for 12 weeks to spend at their discretion on PayPal – and to talk about it on the Lustable website. 


The bloggers are not, we understand, under any obligation to write about the project on their blogs.

PayPal is referring to the bloggers as "editors", disclosing that it has "cashed them up" and that there is no copy approval.

The money is being deposited into their PayPal accounts and we understand that what the bloggers purchase, they get to keep. What happens if they don't spend all the money and siphon some of the funds out of PayPal into their bank accounts, like a salary? Good question. Apparently there is nothing in writing stopping them from doing this.

But just a reminder that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

PayPal will presumably be writing your names down on its books as suppliers and the ATO will presumably regard this as income. And needless to say, if you were to blow 12K on non legitimate business expenses such as clothes, cosmetics, jewellery and accessories, then you could ostensibly wind up with a hefty tax bill on the other side. That will of course be of little concern to PayPal.

Happy shopping.

Main image: L to R: Style Melbourne, Fashion Hayley, Little Black Book, Drop Stitch, Sassi Sam, Karen Cheng.

ABC Art Nation's story on fashion bloggers

Here is the ABC Art Nation story on fashion bloggers that I mentioned was due to air on Sunday evening, for anyone who missed it. The entire half hour show was in fact dedicated to fashion, which was great to see on Australian television - for once. Will bring you the other stories as quickly as the ABC can get those embed codes over. There was a great standalone profile on our buddy Sonny Vandevelde. And not before time.

ABC Art Nation tracks fashion bloggers

Well we did say RAFW is shaping up as a blogocalypse. And look, frockwriter actually means that in the nicest possible way. A mere whisper at the 2006 event, bloggers are really coming into their own this year. According to The Sydney Morning Herald's Georgina Robinson, whose story about fashion bloggers was splashed on page one of smh.com.au on Thursday, IMG had (as of Wednesday) officially accredited 20 bloggers this year. Robinson later revealed on Twitter that the company had knocked back another 30. In the interim, a number of those knocked back have had their accreditations rushed through. On the eve of RAFW, ABC's Art Nation joins the score of mainstream outlets to track the rise of fashion blogging as part of today's fashion-focussed show. I was honoured to be included, alongside Lady Melbourne and Fashion Hayley (with Sonny Vandevelde featured in either this or a separate story. Sonny was filmed during his recent LMFF exhibition).

The program airs at 5.30pm on ABC1 today and it will be repeated at 7pm on ABC2. Hopefully it will also go online.

In the interim, here is the teaser video from the ABC Art Nation site.

Just to further clarify the accreditation issue for bloggers, some appear to have erroneously believed an accreditation was the only entry point to the event.

Incorrect.

An accreditation, while handy, is only a guarantee into the main venue, the trade show, the media centre and the daily group shows that are organised by IMG. The guest lists of all solo collection shows are strictly at the discretion of the designers. Which is exactly how it works overseas. Earlier this week one Sydney publicist mentioned that 50percent of her guest list/s are non delegates.

Publicists appear to be thawing to the idea of bloggers. Which is great news. Because at the end of the day, they must surely realise that although the number of Australian newspapers, magazines and tv outlets covering RAFW has remained fairly static over the years, the number of independent online media outlets has grown exponentially. This coverage is new, additional exposure for all concerned.

Just a few of the great blogs that will be front and centre covering include, once again, Sonnyphotos (your go-to for the best backstage photography), also Imelda (the shoe expert - with an acerbic general fashion eye), Cultures In Between (an achingly cool indie perspective), the upwardly-mobile Sassisam, New Zealand's Aych and Isaaclikes and Sassybella.

There are many, many more, including etailer blogs (such as The Grand Social). I am flat out today and I am so sorry I don't have time to compile an exhaustive list, but please sing out in the comments so people know where to find you.

Best of luck to everyone with their coverage for the coming week.

I will do a post later today to clarify how frockwriter's multi-platform coverage will work this year. I am hoping this will make it easier to follow. Guys, I cannot do everything on Blogger. It's as simple as that.

In the interim, I have also included a Twitter widget to the RHS set to anyone referencing RAFW. If you are not familiar with Twitter, just click on the links highlighted in blue for more info about those people.

Lady Melbourne fronts Peppermint

Yes bloggers are so hot right now. You only have to check out Bryanboy’s new rabbit-in-headlights masthead pic taken at the SS10 Dolce e Gabbana show – for which he, The Sartorialist, Garance Doré and Tommy Ton were plonked frow alongside fash industry stalwarts Suzy Menkes, Anna Wintour and co, complete with laptops. Blogger collab windows kicked off with The Sartorialist and Saks Fifth Avenue back in October 2006, but reached critical mass this year, with Holt Renfrew hooking up with BB and others and Brisbane’s own Jean Brown dedicating an entire installation to Imelda. Well frockwriter can reveal that in the recent SM tradition of hot net babes who are rucking up not only traffic, but modeling tie-ins (eg Julia Frakes and Fashiontoast's Rumi Neely now repped by NY's Next Models), Phoebe Montague, aka Lady Melbourne, is due to appear on the cover of Oz eco magazine Peppermint. If some (if not many) fash mag slags are picking up content from the blogosphere, good to see a little credit finally being given where credit's due.